Homer

by Harold Bloom (Editor)

Homer, the legendary Greek poet, is often credited with having created The Iliad and The Odyssey . Scholars debate whether such a figure actually existed, yet what remains certain is the importance of these two works as foundational texts of Western literature. This updated volume in the celebrated Bloom's Modern Critical Views series explores Homer's transformative effect on epic and bardic poetry, as well as his narrative technique and use of language and meter. Integrating select, full-length critical essays from key literary publications with a chronology, notes on the contributors, bibliography, and more, Homer, Updated Edition will further understanding of the fabled bard and spark lively academic discussion.

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2006

About the author

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.

Reviews

[Solomon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish it had more Bloom! (Though he’s hard to read). Some were kind of boring (okay yes, Homer’s narrator knows all, is omniscient, okay..) some disagreed, specifically about the meaning of the invocation of the muse, what that meant specifically. They also had different interpretations about how Truth was represented in Homer. Lots of good ideas throughout.

Some quotes:

Could it be that because of the centrality of the realization of meanings to our being, representation of what actually was would require not merely simplification and emphasis, but even the distortion of factual elements, that the essential might come out more clearly? If so, then the representation would not be an image in the mode of reproduction, whose truthfulness would amount to its exact correspondence with the facts. It would rather be an image in the mode of adaptation, which adapts and Fitz facts together and integrates them with what is not fact in such a way as enables the effective narrative representation of the factual of the being of human beings as this factual reality centers in a realization of meanings and is not merely a miscellany of complex factual elements.

“textual closure” of the Homeric corpus was accompanied by “hermeneutical openness” toward it — a sure sign of canonical status that the text of Homer had acquired.